Abstract

It is well known that dominance-subordinate interactions form an important part of social organisation in primitively eusocial wasps (1). In many studies of social insects, the rank of an animal is based merely on the frequency with which it shows dominance behaviour. This is misleading because a high frequency of dominance behaviour may be accompanied by an equally high frequency of subordinate behaviour. Moreover showing dominance over a high ranking individual should be weighed differently from showing dominance over a low ranking individual. For these reasons, we have used a modified version of the index of fighting success that was developed for red deer to solve similar problems(2).